In the Sacramento region there is a popular morning talk show called The Rob, Arnie, and horse's ass show. I often enjoy reading Rob's intellegent soapbox posts on the show's webpage. But today I read Rob's recent soapbox post http://robarnieanddawn.com/newsite/robsoapbox.html and was a little disappointed in Rob. His post basically asks the question to people, why tax the success of rich people? I am under the impression from reading Rob's soapbox posts, that he is a staunch believer in Capitalism and the presence of social darwinism. He often complains of taxing the rich as wrong because they are essentially better than the rest of everyone else because they obviously achieved more and have more. I completly agree with the true presence of social darwinism in human society, that those who are rich desrve it and those who lay in the gutter desrve it, I am not as much of a capitialist as Rob, I am on the lefter side of social capitalism scale that we have in the US, but I am far from being a socialist.
Rob asks in his soapbox post, how does the suffering of others improve your life? Or essentialy paraphrasing his entire post, how does taxing rich people's success make you feel better? And Rob sums up the post by saying he is confused when people do this and that it doesn't make you feel better.
But I have a question for Rob and everyone to think about. In terms of social darwinism, who is better, the apparently "smarter" rich person who goes to school, works, hard, and gets rich, or the poor lazy guy who gets the guys tax money from medicare, welfare, etc? Wealth is determined by how much you have been able to transfer in your favor, and if we judge people on the social darwin scale of intellgence by how much money they have....so who is smarter? The Robin Hood who manages to steal from the rich and give to the needy or the rich guy who lets it happen? I would say if your rich and your getting taxed, your not that smart than are you? Thats why we had revolutions, it was social darwinism, you do what is neccessary to get what you want.
And a little look at history for you staunch capitalists, the US was 100% capitalist in the 19th century, and we had pretty much a 90% of the population in poverty, and 90% of the wealth in the hands of 10% of the population. So through social darwinism, the poor people got smarter and asked the government to force a more equal distribution of wealth. So essentially, the poor people got smarter and developed a middle class, taking from the rich, doesn't social darwinism merrit that people got smarter. Not to mention, rich people had their speal going pretty well during the middle ages, with the hole church thing, with nobles, indulgences, etc. But when one of those rich people wasn't so smart and let Columbus land in America, and the middle class was born from the reinassance, protestant rev., enlightenment, industrial revolution, etc, social darwinsm says it is just. So I say this, if rich people are getting taxed, or poor people are getting poorer, or the middle class is growing, I don't care what is happening, social darwinism says everything happens justly.
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2 comments:
Social Darwinism, James? What about education? population? economic sanctions? Gov't regulations? Being born into wealth or poverty? those all play into your chances of being in a higher social class or not. That opinion wasn't very little by the way! lol!
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If it were true that all wealth was derived from the hard work or ingenuity of the individual i would say you have a case. Unfortunately there always has been those born into considerable wealth, and there have always been those born into deep poverty. Those impoverished people generally have less access to education and have less opportunities compared with those of the high-middle and wealthy classes. As far as the bum sucking of the tit of society... let him have a flop; its not as if he is striking it rich, he's just surviving. Everyone has the right to survive...even bums.I don't think they are intelegent, or ingenuitive, they have simply found a niche that allows them life. So who gets the Shaft?
The shrinking middle class. Too rich for aid, (school, welfare, healthcare)and too poor to have any buying power. We are those who cannot afford to carry savings accounts because we are those who live paycheck to paycheck, always wondering when we will get our big break, or simply waiting for the last pin to drop that sends us careening off middle-class platform and into to throngs of the poor. What happens then? Are we smarter because we are able to live off the national dole?
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